


guilt

by brightclam



Series: fuck the discovery writers AU [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, ash tyler isn't voq, lorca is manipulative but not evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 10:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13315806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightclam/pseuds/brightclam
Summary: He's not losing another crew. He's going to get discovery through the war, no matter how many morals he has to ignore.{Don't read if you want Lorca to be evil or Ash to be Voq. That will never be canon for me, so you won't find it here.}





	guilt

**Author's Note:**

> after seeing episode 10, I'm writing my own canon to cope. yay.
> 
> tw: slight self harm and suicidal thoughts, canon level of violence.

\-----

Lorca knows he isn’t right; he doesn’t need Kat or any other doctor to confirm it for him. He can feel it, he’s the one living it. He’s the one who wakes from terrible nightmares, who sees enemies behind every corner, whose fingers itch and body shivers unless there’s a phaser in reach.

 

Really, they should have taken away his command when he refused the surgery on his eyes. It helps him remember is a thin excuse, and anyone who knew him would recognize it as a lie. He’s punishing himself, as if it’ll help any of his dead crew rest easier.

 

But they gave him a new command, because they need him. Some days, that’s the only thing that gets him out of bed. He may be broken, but he is still strong enough. He can still win this war. He is still useful. So he stalks through the halls and sits in his captain’s chair with confidence and he fights their fucking war.

 

He fights mean, desperate, like a wolf caught in a trap. He fights too vicious and that’s why he’s been trying to break Stamets down since he came on board. A chief engineer who doesn’t listen is a liability, a weak point that could get them all killed in battle. Lorca does break him; eventually, all it takes is playing some screams over the intercom. 

 

Breaks him too well, maybe, because he turns himself into a martyr. Saru pushes him, because he’s desperate to please and haunted by one dead captain already. Lorca may just have picked him for that reason. Saru is relentless and Stamets has too many morals and soon enough Lorca has a genetically engineered weapon at his command.

 

Lorca collects his crew carefully, find the people who are just a bit off, whose own issues are useful to him. He binds his new crew to him in a web of desperation and pain that becomes loyalty. He pushes them farther than he should, because he needs them to be perfect, so they can win this war and survive it as well.

 

(Too well, too well; it’s not his fault. But Landry was his security officer and her viciousness matched his own. He cultivated it in her, encouraged her recklessness and need to please him. It’s not his fault but he can’t help but feel that he’s the reason she thought she could control a tardigrade with a phaser rifle and some anesthetic gas. She’s left bloodstains on his trophy room’s floor and he pretends that doesn’t haunt him too. He twists her into another weapon, turns her on Michael, and says not to let her sacrifice be in vain.)

 

And when the Klingons get him, he’s reminded exactly why he blew up his own crew. The halls are dirty and filled with screams of other prisoners. If he asked them, they’d probably beg for a quick death by explosion. 

 

(Lorca almost wishes he’d died before they got him too. But he’s also pissed as hell, and wants to take as many of them down with him as he can. He wraps the rage around himself like a warm coat and bites down on his tongue, the spark of pain and iron tang of blood helping to ground him.)

 

They throw him in a new cell with a civilian whose clothes are too clean, whose eyes are too bright and clear. Lorca watches the man, sure he’s not trustworthy, and the man watches him back with scavengers eyes. 

 

When the Klingons enter a few minutes later, Lorca stays still and waits. The scavenger crooks a finger at the sobbing starfleet prisoner in the corner. The Klingon lunges and throws the crewman into a wall, and for a moment Lorca recognizes him as the helmsman from the Buran. A blink later, he’s once again a stranger, and the Klingon’s foot comes down on his head.

 

The cell rings with an awful crack and the body is dragged out, leaving a trail of blood. Lorca fights back the image of Landry’s mauled body and bows his head, mourning the nameless crewman for a moment. The scavenger pouts, as if he hadn’t caused the man’s death.

 

Lorca roams the cell, checking for weakness and burning off restless energy, carefully avoiding the scavenger's bench. When he peeks behind a wall of pipes, there’s another starfleet person curled in on himself protectively. Their eyes meet and Lorca’s heart stops. The man is a mixture of doe-eyed and dead-eyed; holding himself up with unkillable strength, but still slumped with unbearable pain.

 

Lorca sees himself in this broken man, and something worse, something deeper. He sees so much hurt and knows it’s going to eat this man alive. It chokes his throat with empathetic fear, but he manages to speak:

 

“I didn’t know anyone else was in here.”

 

The man emerges, taking in Lorca’s captain’s stripes with hero worship in his eyes. Lorca sees just how easy it’s going to be, keeping this man on his side. He isn’t even going to have to work for his loyalty.

 

The man---Ash Tyler---offers him the food and he’s so damned self sacrificing, so loyal to Lorca for no reason other than his starfleet captaincy. Lorca can already see him in Landry’s place, a loyal officer stalking at his side, a phaser rifle at home in his arms. When the scavenger takes the tiny bit of food, Lorca vows that Mudd is going to pay.

 

Ash Tyler is what would have happened to his crew if he hadn’t killed them, and Lorca feels both endlessly pleased and endlessly hurt when he looks at him. But no matter, whether Tyler is proof he was right or another way to remind himself, Lorca is getting him out of here.

 

\-------

Lorca doesn’t hesitate before sending Kat off to the Klingons, even knowing their tender mercies first hand now. He’s not losing his crew again, not even for a woman he may have loved once.

\-------

She doesn’t die, damn her. He should have known; she’s too strong and stubborn to die. Starfleet’s medical miracles will have her back on her feet soon enough, and then she’ll talk.

 

Lorca isn’t dumb enough to sink any lower. Let her take his ship from him. He’s tired of fighting and lying and pretending he’s not falling apart.

 

He may never feel the hum of Discovery’s impulse engines under his feet again, never feel his stomach drop out of him as the spore drive jumps again, but he’ll make sure he gets to watch the stars stretch as they make one last jump to warp. 

 

It’s easy, typing in the location. When the Tardigrade still powered the ship, Lorca had a panel installed in his chair so he could input the locations into it. He picks a location only a few light years from the starbase, just enough that he can order Discovery into warp last time.

 

It’s easy. One last simple lie, to close it off. 

 

It’s easy, until Stamets’ screaming comes through the intercom and Discovery shutters hard, throwing the bridge crew to the floor. Discovery reappears in a floating junkyard, her lights flashing confusedly. Stamets’ screaming has stopped and Lorca whispers, loud in the fearful silence of the bridge:

“Where the hell are we?”

\-------


End file.
